Indeed. Little indicates that the universe follows strict logic or is very intuitive.

When we go to certain levels of interactions in physics, even causation seems to fall apart. Not in the sense that there doesn't seem be relationships between events, but in the sense that we can't necessarily tell what is the cause and what is the effect. And determining that is an integral component of logic.

Not really? Sure, there is a colloquial sense in which people use "logical" as meaning something like "obvious" or "it just really seems that way to me." When someone says that some claim is "logical" this is typically what they mean. But that hasn't been what "logic" means in philosophy since the nineteenth-century. A claim isn't logical, but rather inferences or arguments are logical (yeah, some claims are about inferences, but leave those aside). Today, logic is broadly seen as the study of the rules of inference and argumentation and a logic as a formally defined language with a specified set of deductive and semantic rules. Thus, claims about causation are generally seen as a matter for scientific investigation, which might use a logic as a tool to reason about such claims, but these claims are not themselves inherent or even particularly integral to logic.

For instance, look at first five articles in SEP on causation. None of them have much discussion of logic at all, except for a few comments in the "Metaphysics of Causation" on an objection to a particular view of causation on the basis of the logical form of causal claims. Meanwhile, the SEP article "Classical Logic" doesn't mention causation at all. You will find discussions of causation in older discussions of inductive logic, such as Mill's 1843 A System of Logic. But this is before the invention of mathematical logic, and today philosophers mostly just throw up their hands because of the problem of induction and just don't count induction as logic.

When we go to certain levels of interactions in physics, even causation seems to fall apart. Not in the sense that there doesn't seem be relationships between events, but in the sense that we can't necessarily tell what is the cause and what is the effect. And determining that is an integral component of logic.

Meh. Propositional logic can do without any sense of causation. Determining properties of the intersection of circles and lines doesn't require one action to be a cause and another action to be an effect. Arithmetic and algebraic logic don't really need cause and effect.

It does seem somewhat nonsensical for you to be using the laws of logic to try to defeat the idea that they don't always apply... it's... illogical....

This still doesnt show that logic is an immutable property of the universe. You are assuming that it is , and then going "ahah! see, you are using logic, so it must be an immutable property".

I dont know what it means by "they dont always apply". Always apply when? and to whom? Do they apply to a flower, for example?

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How about you give an example of something that logic would determine illogical, but is true? For example, you could offer two contradictory facts that are both true simultaneously, therebye disproving the law of non-contradiction.

Or another example if you prefer.

You are assuming a whole load of things, that I think you need to show.

Perhaps I dont understand what you mean by "immutable property" which is why I asked you many pages back what you meant.

Well, like I suggested, perhaps the best way to convince you is to ask you to provide an example that breaks it, I'm not trying to pass the burden onto you, nor is it an argument from ignorance. Being able to show something that doesn't fit into the framework of logical laws should be easy if it's possible. It's not though. Logic always applies and it's always right.

Show me an example of something that breaks the law of non-contradiction. Or if you prefer, choose your own law of logic and give an example of when it doesnt apply?

I don't see anything of the ontological argument in my response. Please explain.

Your OP was about how to resolve an apparent conflict between free will and a God that is perfect and maximally powerful and knowledgeable. You think there is a conflict because you think a perfect god must create a world without moral choices. Why? There are moral theories that view free will as the basis of morality, so why doesn't it instead follow from this view of god that a perfect god must create a universe that has free-willed beings in it in order for it to have any moral value (surely a requirement of a perfect universe) and so anything that follows from this claim must also be true (including that some things happen that are not what this perfect god intended)? Or that this god doesn't know everything that happens in the future?

In the same way that the ontological argument offers two possibilities, (existing and not existing) and suggests that one of those is necessarily better than the other, you did the same thing with your example and suggested that a universe where people voluntarily act in a moral way is necessarily better than one where they're forced, therefore that's the thing which must exist. I thought you did it deliberately.

But, in a universe where every action is created by god, there are no moral choices because there are no choices. We can't do other than what god made us to do when he created everything. Moral theories "that view free will as the basis of morality" would be wrong in this model.

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Originally Posted by Original Position

You are assuming this when you need to argue for it. Perfect foreknowledge of the future might not be an implication of an omnimax god if (a) an omnimax god would prefer to create a universe with free-willed beings and (b) a universe with free-willed beings cannot be perfectly foreknown.

The dogma that god doesn't experience time is not a requirement of Christian theology nor universally accepted by Christians.

I thought that the 'god doesn't experience time' idea was the only way to resolve the 'foreknowledge/free will' conflict' but whether it's true or not has no bearing on what I'm arguing because whether he does or not, he's still perfect, omniscient and omnipotent and nothing can be other than how he wills it to be (everything is god's will, or it isn't, there can't be another choice), and he can't will anything to be other than perfect, and there's only one value of 'most perfect' so there's only ever one way thnigs could have been.

So, I've come back to this 'most perfect' value idea, which you don't agree with (and my best effort was to use the ontological argument as an example) I'm not really sure what else I can offer. If there can be more than one value of 'most perfect' then there's no reason why there couldn't be multiple perfect gods, is that an idea you agree with? Or does it defeat itself because of all the problems it would create?

Suppose your multiverse idea is true, each choice we make spawns a new universe, how does that deal with the problem of people making conflicting choices in the same universe?

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Originally Posted by Original Position

This isn't "addressing" it, it is you just asserting your thesis in the face of objections to this specific point. I and others have told you exactly how an omnimax god might not know what he will decide to do - if the future is not yet set because it is at least partially the result of freely chosen decisions that have yet to be made. God can't know what is impossible to know, even an omnimax god.

But every single moment of creation, from start to finish, is known to god because he must have allowed it. Nothing can happen unless he allows it, and he can't allow it if it's not known to him, or he's not omnipotent and omniscient. In the moment that he created the universe, he knew everything about it, for all of time, whether he personally experiences time or not.

Well, like I suggested, perhaps the best way to convince you is to ask you to provide an example that breaks it, I'm not trying to pass the burden onto you, nor is it an argument from ignorance. Being able to show something that doesn't fit into the framework of logical laws should be easy if it's possible. It's not though. Logic always applies and it's always right.

You are mistaking axiomatic for immutable. The law of non-contradiction cannot be proven, nor can it be disproven. It's an axiom. Because there is something else out there:

A dialetheia is a sentence, A, such that both it and its negation, ¬ A, are true. If falsity is assumed to be the truth of negation, a dialetheia is a sentence which is both true and false.

...

Dialetheism is the view that there are dialetheias. If we define a contradiction as a couple of sentences, one of which is the negation of the other, or as a conjunction of such sentences, then dialetheism amounts to the claim that there are true contradictions. As such, dialetheism opposes—contradicts—the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC), sometimes also called the Law of Contradiction.

But, in a universe where every action is created by god, there are no moral choices because there are no choices. We can't do other than what god made us to do when he created everything. Moral theories "that view free will as the basis of morality" would be wrong in this model.

Those that hold to the view that man has some form of "free will" don't
believe that "every action is created by God." You seem to be assuming
what you are trying to assert.

In the same way that the ontological argument offers two possibilities, (existing and not existing) and suggests that one of those is necessarily better than the other, you did the same thing with your example and suggested that a universe where people voluntarily act in a moral way is necessarily better than one where they're forced, therefore that's the thing which must exist. I thought you did it deliberately.

But, in a universe where every action is created by god, there are no moral choices because there are no choices. We can't do other than what god made us to do when he created everything. Moral theories "that view free will as the basis of morality" would be wrong in this model.

You are just assuming your conclusion that God can't create free-willed beings.

1) An omnimax God desires to create a maximally perfect universe.
2) A maximally perfect universe requires the possibility of moral value.
3) An omnimax God desires to create a universe with the possibility of moral value.

4) The possibility of moral value requires beings who can make free choices.
5) Thus, an omnimax God desires to create a universe with beings who can make free choices.

6) Beings who can make free choices can choose to do evil.
7) Therefore, a maximally perfect universe requires beings who can choose to do evil.

8) An omnimax God cannot determine beings who make free choices to not choose evil.
9) Therefore, a maximally perfect universe requires beings that an omnimax God cannot determine to not choose evil.

10) A maximally perfect universe is a universe where all beings never choose to do evil.
11) Therefore, an omnimax God cannot determine that the actual universe is the maximally perfect universe.

Where's the contradiction? Notice that omnipotence and omniscience only imply that God can do what it is possible to do, so if it not possible for God to determine that the actual universe is the maximally perfect universe, then God not doing so is not in conflict with God's omniscience and omnipotence.

You seem to think the claim that the actual universe is a maximally perfect universe is a claim of Christian theology. Some Christians, most famously Leibniz, have made this claim, but I'd say most reject it.

But every single moment of creation, from start to finish, is known to god because he must have allowed it. Nothing can happen unless he allows it, and he can't allow it if it's not known to him, or he's not omnipotent and omniscient.

Omnipotence/omniscience is the capacity to do/know all that is possible. It is conceivable that there is information that is not available at a particular moment in time. There's an entire line of reasoning called "Open Theism":

While Open Theists affirm that God knows all the truths that can be known, they claim that there simply are not yet truths about what will occur in the “open,” undetermined future. Alternatively, there are such contingent truths, but these truths cannot be known by anyone, including God.

The concept of the "eternal now" is not fundamental Christian doctrine. This isn't to say that it's non-existent, but it just means that you would need to make a far more robust argument that is not dependent upon this idea to be successful in arguing your position. For example, within Catholicism:

Well, like I suggested, perhaps the best way to convince you is to ask you to provide an example that breaks it, I'm not trying to pass the burden onto you, nor is it an argument from ignorance. Being able to show something that doesn't fit into the framework of logical laws should be easy if it's possible. It's not though. Logic always applies and it's always right.

Show me an example of something that breaks the law of non-contradiction. Or if you prefer, choose your own law of logic and give an example of when it doesnt apply?

You arent understanding what I am saying. The fact that I cannot give you an example that breaks the law of non-contradiction, does not prove your assertion that logic is an immutable property of the universe. You would have to show you get from

Meh. Propositional logic can do without any sense of causation. Determining properties of the intersection of circles and lines doesn't require one action to be a cause and another action to be an effect. Arithmetic and algebraic logic don't really need cause and effect.

I don't find it very compelling in this context that you can use logic to determine properties of lines and circles. Geometry at its core is the application of mathematical axioms to determine the properties of points, lines and shapes, not observation. It certainly has enormous utility, but the study model will still never be the observed object and the answers you derive from it will never go beyond approximation.

I don't find it very compelling in this context that you can use logic to determine properties of lines and circles. Geometry at its core is the application of mathematical axioms to determine the properties of points, lines and shapes, not observation. It certainly has enormous utility, but the study model will still never be the observed object and the answers you derive from it will never go beyond approximation.

That's fine. That wasn't the only example presented.

But mostly, it's a rejection that "determining [cause and effect] is an integral component of logic." Even when "logic" is being applied to physics, it's done through mathematical language and not obvious that cause and effect are integral to that.

Indeed. Little indicates that the universe follows strict logic or is very intuitive.

When we go to certain levels of interactions in physics, even causation seems to fall apart. Not in the sense that there doesn't seem be relationships between events, but in the sense that we can't necessarily tell what is the cause and what is the effect. And determining that is an integral component of logic.

Yet we still attempt to dig deeper to understand it because we really do believe we can eventually make sense of seemingly insensible things.

Meh. Propositional logic can do without any sense of causation. Determining properties of the intersection of circles and lines doesn't require one action to be a cause and another action to be an effect. Arithmetic and algebraic logic don't really need cause and effect.

Can a real cat in the universe also be a car in this same universe? No? Then I guess A v ~A applies to lots of things in the universe then?

Logic is the language of reason we use to understand a reasonable universe.

The law of identity must apply to all interpretations of the variable in order to be true. Otherwise you just have a principle about cats and cars (which your example isn't actually the law of identity anyway as we could have a catcar

The law of identity must apply to all interpretations of the variable in order to be true. Otherwise you just have a principle about cats and cars (which your example isn't actually the law of identity anyway as we could have a catcar

I'd like to see a proof of that. (LOL -- I wonder if you actually know enough logic to see your error...)

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...and uses its own logical rules and definitions to confirm itself.

No. You clearly have very little sense of how math works. You keep making statements that show your ignorance. Definitions do not "confirm" themselves in any logical sense. Definitions are arbitrary constructs that we create.

I'd like to see a proof of that. (LOL -- I wonder if you actually know enough logic to see your error...)

If you're implying Gödels incompleteness theorem here I suggest you read it again. All that says is that there are conjectures in mathematics that are true but unprovable by the axioms of math. It nowhere states that true conjectures in mathematics are inconsistent with the rest of mathematics.

No. You clearly have very little sense of how math works. You keep making statements that show your ignorance. Definitions do not "confirm" themselves in any logical sense. Definitions are arbitrary constructs that we create.

A really funny post. Of course the language and logic and definitions of math are used to prove themselves. Math is one big circular argument, because it rests in axioms which are circular. Like all arguments.

If you're implying Gödels incompleteness theorem here I suggest you read it again. All that says is that there are conjectures in mathematics that are true but unprovable by the axioms of math. It nowhere states that true conjectures in mathematics are inconsistent with the rest of mathematics.